Member Info for johnmcclean

Dare I say €20 by Christmas. Now that 18 has been broken I think its looking good.

Bit of an up trend setting in at last. Breaking the 18 euro price will be the test.

"Could be better" Realism setting in at last allmoyne. Yet again the only thing maintaining the profit is cost cutting. In a normal business cutting costs generally increase profits. Serious case of peddling the bike with no chain here.

"One logic behind the float naturally is that it is cheaper for any company to fund their operations in equity markets rather than with debt as the company can always decide not to pay any dividends." This is from one article on the apn split. It doesn't read well to me, especially the last bit. From my reading of other reports on this is that IF this goes ahead it is to raise funds to pay down debt. Only 60 mil aus dollars will be retained by apn as new cash. There is no talk of sharing this with shareholders. If they did inm would get 8million. Great if it happens but I doubt they will. The reason behind all this is a failed attempt by apn to raise $250 mil in a bond. It was given junk rating so never went ahead. Apn are just exploring other ways to pay down debt. Remind you of another media company?

Your going to have to explain the 40m apn money to me allmoyne. I haven't seen anything about it. What did the times have to say?

I think a pay wall is inevitable. It is the only way newspapers will survive at all into the future. The only way it will work though is for all the papers to charge.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/manufacturing/smurfit-kappa-in-157m-deal-for-us-company-1.1945214

The problem for inm and all other newspapers is the amount of free news available. The only way a pay wall would work is for everyone to charge for content. It's inevitable that will happen at some stage in the future. If news paper saless continue to fall there's no way inm or anyone else will be able to afford journalists of any quality. There are only two ways inm can advance here in my opinion, a monopoly and/or a successful pay wall. There's an interview with Do'B in the post today. Very little on inm except to say it was a bad investment but we are at the bottom now. He sees only room for a couple of titles in ireland and cooperation between all players. He also reckons there needs to be a tie up with all forms of media, print, digital and radio. Bit of lobbying to change ireland's competition laws on the cards I suspect.

He is wrong. It had a bit of a glich this year because of the political situation in Venezuela. Still up 12% YTD so what he said makes no sence. My target for the next six months is €22 and a nice dividend. He mustn't read his own company notes either because both my previous posts are from goodbodys briefings. If you have the time do some figures on this and you might be surprised Bob.

The latest pricing data for Europe shows price increases in both the major containerboard grades in Germany for September. Testliner prices increased by €30/tonne, which is consistent with moves seen in other European markets and compares to the €60-70/tonne target. Kraftliner prices have increased by €30/tonne (versus €50/tonne target) representing the first price rise since 2013, while OCC grades remained stable for the month. It is encouraging to see kraftliner grades now reflecting price increases along with testliner grades, which underpins box prices and provides a platform for further growth in 2015. Indeed, we believe the risks to testliner pricing remain on the upside following the unscheduled downtime of one of Europe's largest testliner machines which will tighten inventory levels at a seasonally busy stage of the year. Smurfit Kappa remains the best way to play these positive trends and offers compelling value at current levels with the stock trading at an unwarranted discount to peers.

Palm Group’s 650k tonne testliner mill in Germany has been out of production since August 26th following an electrical failure. Originally the stoppage was meant to last no longer than ten days however difficulty in sourcing spare parts means the mill will not restart production until September 22nd, which will bring the total stoppage to four weeks. The expected paper loss from this downtime is estimated to be 47k tonnes. While this seems like a small amount in a 20m tonne market we note that this represents almost 10% of the European industry’s total average inventory levels. We believe that this will lead to increased speculation on further testliner price increases in late September and October. Palm Group’s operational issues are positive for the overall European containerboard pricing backdrop given the likely pressure that it will put on the industry’s supply-demand balance. At the very least, it should support the €30/tonne testliner price increase already implemented and possibly lead to a push for further increases. We believe Smurfit Kappa is the most attractive way to play these positive price trends and reiterate our BUY recommendation.

So the CFO announces he is moving on and been replaced by a guy from tesco. The price is up nearly 5% so either we think he wasn't the best or that the new cfo is exceptional. Looking at where tesco is at these days I'm not sure which it is. Anyone know the real reason for the sudden jump?

Restocking happening in China is sparking a bit of demand in Europe. €60/ ton price increase looks like it could stick. Bottom line looks like it will be very healthy by year end. What skg is going to do with this healthy cash flow will be interesting. Will it be acquisition or dividend?

The search for Utopia continues but for now this is as good as it gets. By no means is this the perfect country and there are plenty of things that badly need fixing. It's not you that's annoying me the phrase " banana Republic" just gets up my nose. I don't know your nationality but its ever worse when irish people use.  There's not many countries in the world where the only natural resources it has is its people and rain that could get to the top of these type of polls.

Another index of the best countries to live in in 2014, based on UN data but on softer criteria. No.1 IRELAND. http://www.goodcountry.org/overall

BEST IN THE WORLD IRELAND. FORBES best country in the world to do business in 2013. Below is what this is judged on. It annoys the hell out of me when this banna Republic thing is throw out. "We determined the Best Countries for Business by grading 145 nations on 11 different factors: property rights, innovation, taxes, technology, corruption, freedom (personal, trade and monetary), red tape, investor protection and stock market performance. Each category was equally weighted. The data came from published reports from the following organizations: Freedom House, Heritage Foundation, Property Rights Alliance, Transparency International, World Bank and World Economic Forum. "

Desmond would be in profit at 18c. He would make millions if he was able to find a buyed. His buying spree only started in early 2011 and by May 2011 he only owned 2% of inm. I think around 20c was the market price then. By December 11 he had 4%. By February 12 he bad 31.6 million shares and 5.57% of inm. But in November 13 his stake was 15%. His avg price has to be around todays price of 13c and possibly lower because he may have bought below the quoted price on occasion.

I'm glad you recognise the problems inm has. For the last while it has maintained profits by cost cutting. Great in itself but only treading water as the business is contracting and not growing. The fact is print media is selling less product yoy. The pie is shrinking and while they might shout about been No1in this and No1 in that it means diddly squat. So, they have a million views on the web paper, great, except without a pay wall the views are free. For web based businesses to give product away for free they need hundreds of millions of users. That way ad revenue is substantial and profitable. There just isn't the population here to justify free content in the long term. It won't take long for growth in digital add revenue to level out as views stabilise. You also recognised another fact. Growing online add revenue by 30% is great except in the bigger picture it means very little. Growing standard add revenue by 5% would be much more meaningful. Unfortunately, every time the number of newspapers been sold is announced that prospect reduces. But....O'brien and Desmond are no fools. I can't believe they wouldn't have seen all these thing already. Desmond could have cut and run at 18c but didn't. There must surely be a long term plan here. An improved economy should at least keep inm stable for now and give them a chance to do their thing. Long term there is still hope but for now its just sit and wait.

Not a hope in hell. Closer to 10c than 20c unfortunately. Results today were dire again. Absolutely no growth. If it wasn't for yet more cost cutting it would have been worse. Their big hope of a digital revolution added less than 5m to revenue. Growing by small in the overall revenue. They spent 10m alone last year on digital relate investment. By far its biggest asset is APN and we are down to less than 20% there. Two things that may save it. 1. Other titles close and inm has a monopoly. 2....someone cracks paywalls for news. Anyway allmoyne, things are much more positive elsewhere so we can console ourselves over there.

Your optimism would be best place in other quarters allmoyne. I see no ground to believe anything is going to change here regardless of who own the shares. There just isn't any spark for a recovery. Until this much talked about digital strategy proves its worth we are going nowhere.